Chapter Fifteen

Laura had spent some thoughtful hours upon her black lace dress with results that astonished her family: it became a ball-gown--and a splendidly effective one. She arranged her dark hair in a more elaborate fashion than ever before, in a close coronal of faintly lustrous braids; she had no jewellery and obviously needed none. Her last action but one before she left her room was to dispose of the slender chain and key she always wore round her neck; then her final glance at the mirror--which fairly revealed a lovely woman--ended in a deprecatory little "face" she made at herself. It meant: "Yes, old lady, you fancy yourself very passable in here all by yourself, don't you? Just wait: you'll be standing beside Cora in a moment!"

And when she did stand beside Cora, in the latter's room, a moment later, her thought seemed warranted. Cora, radiant-eyed, in high bloom, and exquisite from head to foot in a shimmering white dancing-dress, a glittering crescent fastening the silver fillet that bound her vivid hair, was a flame of enchantment. Mrs. Madison, almost weeping with delight, led her daughters proudly, an arm round the waist of each, into her husband's room. Propped with pillows, he reclined in an armchair while Miss Peirce prepared his bed, an occupation she gave over upon this dazzling entrance, departing tactfully.

"Look at these," cried the mother; "--from our garden, Jim, dear! Don't we feel rich, you and I?"

"And--and--Laura," said the sick man, with the slow and imperfect enunication caused by his disease; "Laura looks pretty--too."

"Isn't she adorable!" Cora exclaimed warmly. "She decided to be the portrait of a young duchess, you see, all stately splendour--made of snow and midnight!"

"Hear! hear!" laughed Laura; but she blushed with pleasure, and taking Cora's hand in hers lifted it to her lips.

"And do you see Cora's crescent?" demanded Mrs. Madison. "What do you think of that for magnificence? She went down town this morning with seven dollars, and came back with that and her party gloves and a dollar in change! Isn't she a bargainer? Even for rhinestones they are the cheapest things you ever heard of. They look precisely like stones of the very finest water." They did--so precisely, indeed, that if the resemblance did not amount to actual identity, then had a jeweller of the town been able to deceive the eye of Valentine Corliss, which was an eye singularly learned in such matters.

"They're--both smart girls," said Madison, "both of them. And they look--beautiful, to-night--both. Laura is--amazing!"

When they had gone, Mrs. Madison returned from the stairway, and, kneeling beside her husband, put her arms round him gently: she had seen the tear that was marking its irregular pathway down his flaccid, gray cheek, and she understood.

"Don't. Don't worry, Jim," she whispered. "Those bright, beautiful things!--aren't they treasures?"

"It's--it's Laura," he said. "Cora will be all right. She looks out for--herself. I'm--I'm afraid for--Laura. Aren't you?"

"No, no," she protested. "I'm not afraid for either of them." But she was: the mother had always been afraid for Cora.

. . . . At the dance, the two girls, attended up the stairway to the ballroom by a chattering covey of black-coats, made a sensational entrance to a gallant fanfare of music, an effect which may have been timed to the premonitory tuning of instruments heard during the ascent; at all events, it was a great success; and Cora, standing revealed under the wide gilt archway, might have been a lithe and shining figure from the year eighteen-hundred-and-one, about to dance at the Luxembourg. She placed her hand upon the sleeve of Richard Lindley, and, glancing intelligently over his shoulder into the eyes of Valentine Corliss, glided rhythmically away.

People looked at her; they always did. Not only the non-dancers watched her; eyes everywhere were upon her, even though the owners gyrated, glided and dipped on distant orbits. The other girls watched her, as a rule, with a profound, an almost passionate curiosity; and they were prompt to speak well of her to men, except in trustworthy intimacy, because they did not enjoy being wrongfully thought jealous. Many of them kept somewhat aloof from her; but none of them ever nowadays showed "superiority" in her presence, or snubbed her: that had been tried and proved disastrous in rebound. Cora never failed to pay her score--and with a terrifying interest added, her native tendency being to take two eyes for an eye and the whole jaw for a tooth. They let her alone, though they asked and asked among themselves the never-monotonous question: "Why do men fall in love with girls like that?" a riddle which, solved, makes wives condescending to their husbands.

Most of the people at this dance had known one another as friends, or antagonists, or indifferent acquaintances, for years, and in such an assembly there are always two worlds, that of the women and that of the men. Each has its own vision, radically different from that of the other; but the greatest difference is that the men are unaware of the other world, only a few of them--usually queer ones like Ray Vilas--vaguely perceiving that there are two visions, while all the women understand both perfectly. The men splash about on the surface; the women keep their eyes open under water. Or, the life of the assembly is like a bright tapestry: the men take it as a picture and are not troubled to know how it is produced; but women are weavers. There was a Beauty of far-flung renown at Mrs. Villard's to-night: Mary Kane, a creature so made and coloured that young men at sight of her became as water and older men were apt to wonder regretfully why all women could not have been made like Mary. She was a kindly soul, and never intentionally outshone her sisters; but the perfect sumptuousness of her had sometimes tried the amiability of Cora Madison, to whom such success without effort and without spark seemed unfair, as well as bovine. Miss Kane was a central figure at the dance, shining tranquilly in a new triumph: that day her engagement had been announced to Mr. George Wattling, a young man of no special attainments, but desirable in his possessions and suitable to his happiness. The pair radiated the pardonable, gay importance of newly engaged people, and Cora, who had never before bestowed any notice upon Mr. Wattling, now examined him with thoughtful attention.

Finding him at her elbow in a group about a punch bowl, between dances, she offered warm felicitations. "But I don't suppose you care whether I care for you to be happy or not," she added, with a little plaintive laugh;--"you've always hated me so!"

Mr. Wattling was startled: never before had he imagined that Cora Madison had given him a thought; but there was not only thought, there was feeling, in this speech. She seemed to be concealing with bravery an even deeper feeling than the one inadvertently expressed. "Why, what on earth makes you think that?" he exclaimed.

"Think it? I know it!" She gave him a strange look, luminous yet mysterious, a curtain withdrawn only to show a shining mist with something undefined but dazzling beyond. "I've always known it!" And she turned away from him abruptly.

He sprang after her. "But you're wrong. I've never----"

"Oh, yes, you have." They began to discuss it, and for better consideration of the theme it became necessary for Cora to "cut" the next dance, promised to another, and to give it to Mr. Wattling. They danced several times together, and Mr. Wattling's expression was serious. The weavers of the tapestry smiled and whispered things the men would not have understood--nor believed.

Ray Vilas, seated alone in a recessed and softly lighted gallery, did not once lose sight of the flitting sorceress. With his elbows on the railing, he leaned out, his head swaying slowly and mechanically as she swept up and down the tumultuously moving room, his passionate eyes gaunt and brilliant with his hunger. And something very like a general thrill passed over the assembly when, a little later, it was seen that he was dancing with her. Laura, catching a glimpse of this couple, started and looked profoundly disturbed.

The extravagance of Vilas's passion and the depths he sounded, in his absurd despair when discarded, had been matters of almost public gossip; he was accounted a somewhat scandalous and unbalanced but picturesque figure; and for the lady whose light hand had wrought such havoc upon him to be seen dancing with him was sufficiently startling to elicit the universal remark--evidently considered superlative--that it was "just like Cora Madison!" Cora usually perceived, with an admirably clear head, all that went on about her; and she was conscious of increasing the sensation, when after a few turns round the room, she allowed her partner to conduct her to a secluding grove of palms in the gallery. She sank into the chair he offered, and, fixing her eyes upon a small lamp of coloured glass which hung overhead, ostentatiously looked bored.

"At your feet, Cora," he said, seating himself upon a stool, and leaning toward her. "Isn't it appropriate that we should talk to music--we two? It shouldn't be that quick step though--not dance-music--should it?"

"Don't know 'm sure," murmured Cora.

"You were kind to dance with me," he said huskily. "I dared to speak to you----"

She did not change her attitude nor the direction of her glance. "I couldn't cut you very well with the whole town looking on. I'm tired of being talked about. Besides, I don't care much who I dance with--so he doesn't step on me."

"Cora," he said, "it is the prelude to `L'Arlesienne' that they should play for you and me. Yes, I think it should be that."

"Never heard of it."

"It's just a rustic tragedy, the story of a boy in the south of France who lets love become his whole life, and then--it kills him."

"Sounds very stupid," she commented languidly.

"People do sometimes die of love, even nowadays," he said, tremulously--"in the South."

She let her eyes drift indifferently to him and perceived that he was trembling from head to foot; that his hands and knees shook piteously; that his lips quivered and twitched; and, at sight of this agitation, an expression of strong distaste came to her face.

"I see." Her eyes returned to the lamp. "You're from the South, and of course it's going to kill you."

"You didn't speak the exact words you had in your mind.'"

"Oh, what words did I have `in my mind'?" she asked impatiently.

"What you really meant was: `If it does kill you, what of it?'"

She laughed, and sighed as for release.

"Cora," he said huskily, "I understand you a little because you possess me. I've never--literally never--had another thought since the first time I saw you: nothing but you. I think of you--actually every moment. Drunk or sober, asleep or--awake, it's nothing but you, you, you! It will never be different: I don't know why I can't get over it--I only know I can't. You own me; you burn like a hot coal in my heart. You're through with me, I know. You drained me dry. You're like a child who eats so heartily of what he likes that he never touches it again. And I'm a dish you're sick of. Oh, it's all plain enough, I can tell you. I'm not exciting any more--no, just a nauseous slave!"

"Do you want people to hear you?" she inquired angrily, for his voice had risen.

He tempered his tone. "Cora, when you liked me you went a pretty clipping gait with me," he said, trembling even more than before. "But you're infinitely more infatuated with this Toreador of a Corliss than you were with me; you're lost in him; you're slaving for him as I would for you. How far are you going with----"

"Do you want me to walk away and leave you?" she asked, suddenly sitting up straight and looking at him with dilating eyes. "If you want a `scene'----"

"It's over," he said, more calmly. "I know now how dangerous the man is. Of course you will tell him I said that." He laughed quietly. "Well--between a dangerous chap and a desperate one, we may look for some lively times! Do you know, I believe I think about as continuously of him, lately, as I do of you. That's why I put almost my last cent into his oil company, and got what may be almost my last dance with you!"

"I wouldn't call it `almost' your last dance with me!" she returned icily. "Not after what you've said. I had a foolish idea you could behave--well, at least decently."

"Did Corliss tell you that I insulted him in his rooms at the hotel?"

"You!" She laughed, genuinely. "I see him letting you!"

"He did, however. By manner and in speech I purposely and deliberately insulted him. You'll tell him every word of this, of course, and he'll laugh at it, but I give myself the pleasure of telling you. I put the proposition of an `investment' to him in a way nobody not a crook would have allowed to be smoothed over--and he allowed it to be smoothed over. He ate it! I felt he was a swindler when he was showing Richard Lindley his maps and papers, and now I've proved it to myself, and it's worth the price." Often, when they had danced, and often during this interview, his eyes lifted curiously to the white flaming crescent in her hair; now they fixed themselves upon it, and in a flash of divination he cried: "You wear it for me!"

She did not understand. "Finished raving?" she inquired.

"I gave Corliss a thousand dollars," he said, slowly. "Considering the fact that it was my last, I flatter myself it was not unhandsomely done--though I may never need it. It has struck me that the sum was about what a man who had just cleaned up fifty thousand might regard as a sort of `extra'--`for lagniappe'--and that he might have thought it an appropriate amount to invest in a present some jewels perhaps--to place in the hair of a pretty friend!"

She sprang to her feet, furious, but he stood in front of her and was able to bar the way for a moment.

"Cora, I'll have a last word with you if I have to hold you," he said with great rapidity and in a voice which shook with the intense repression he was putting upon himself. "We do one thing in the South, where I came from. We protect our women----"

"This looks like it! Keeping me when----"

"I love you," he said, his face whiter than she had ever seen it. "I love you! I'm your dog! You take care of yourself if you want to take care of anybody else! As sure as----"

"My dance, Miss Madison." A young gentleman on vacation from the navy had approached, and, with perfect unconsciousness of what he was interrupting, but with well-founded certainty that he was welcome to the lady, urged his claim in a confident voice. "I thought it would never come, you know; but it's here at last and so am I." He laughed propitiatingly.

Ray yielded now at once. She moved him aside with her gloved forearm as if he were merely an awkward stranger who unwittingly stood between her and the claiming partner. Carrying the gesture farther, she took the latter's arm, and smilingly, and without a backward glance, passed onward and left the gallery. The lieutenant, who had met her once or twice before, was her partner for the succeeding dance as well, and, having noted the advantages of the place where he had discovered her, persuaded her to return there to sit through the second. Then without any fatiguing preamble, he proposed marriage. Cora did not accept, but effected a compromise, which, for the present, was to consist of an exchange of photographs (his to be in uniform) and letters.

She was having an evening to her heart. Ray's attack on Corliss had no dimming effect; her thought of it being that she was "used to his raving"; it meant nothing; and since Ray had prophesied she would tell Corliss about it, she decided not to do so.

The naval young gentleman and Valentine Corliss were the greatest of all the lions among ladies that night; she had easily annexed the lieutenant, and Corliss was hers already; though, for a purpose, she had not yet been seen in company with him. He was visibly "making an impression." His name, as he had said to Richard Lindley, was held in honour in the town; and there was a flavour of fancied romance in his absence since boyhood in unknown parts, and his return now with a `foreign air' and a bow that almost took the breath of some of the younger recipients. He was, too, in his way, the handsomest man in the room; and the smiling, open frankness of his look, the ready cordiality of his manner, were found very winning. He caused plenty of flutter.

Cora waited till the evening was half over before she gave him any visible attention. Then, during a silence of the music, between two dances, she made him a negligent sign with her hand, the gesture of one indifferently beckoning a creature who is certain to come, and went on talking casually to the man who was with her. Corliss was the length of the room from her, chatting gayly with a large group of girls and women; but he immediately nodded to her, made his bow to individuals of the group, and crossed the vacant, glistening floor to her. Cora gave him no greeting whatever; she dismissed her former partner and carelessly turned away with Corliss to some chairs in a corner.

"Do you see that?" asked Vilas, leaning over the balcony railing with Richard Lindley. "Look! She's showing the other girls--don't you see? He's the New Man; she let 'em hope she wasn't going in for him; a lot of them probably didn't even know that she knew him. She sent him out on parade till they're all excited about him; now she shows 'em he's entirely her property--and does it so matter-of-factly that it's rubbed in twice as hard as if she seemed to take some pains about it. He doesn't dance: she'll sit out with him now, till they all read the tag she's put on him. She says she hates being talked about. She lives on it!--so long as it's envious. And did you see her with that chap from the navy? Neptune thinks he's dallying with Venus perhaps, but he'll get----"

Lindley looked at him commiseratingly. "I think I never saw prettier decorations. Have you noticed, Ray? Must have used a thousand chrysanthemums."

"Toreador!" whispered the other between his teeth, looking at Corliss; then, turning to his companion, he asked: "Has it occurred to you to get any information about Basilicata, or about the ancestral domain of the Moliterni, from our consul-general at Naples?"

Richard hesitated. "Well--yes. Yes, I did think of that. Yes, I thought of it."

"But you didn't do it."

"No. That is, I haven't yet. You see, Corliss explained to me that----"

His friend interrupted him with a sour laugh. "Oh, certainly! He's one of the greatest explainers ever welcomed to our city!"

Richard said mildly: "And then, Ray, once I've gone into a thing I--I don't like to seem suspicious."

"Poor old Dick!" returned Vilas compassionately. "You kind, easy, sincere men are so conscientiously untruthful with yourselves. You know in your heart that Cora would be furious with you if you seemed suspicious, and she's been so nice to you since you put in your savings to please her, that you can't bear to risk offending her. She's twisted you around her little finger, and the unnamed fear that haunts you is that you won't be allowed to stay there--even twisted!"

"Pretty decorations, Ray," said Richard; but he grew very red.

"Do you know what you'll do," asked Ray, regarding him keenly, "if this Don Giovanni from Sunny It' is shown up as a plain get-rich-quick swindler?"

"I haven't considered----"

"You would do precisely," said Ray, "nothing! Cora'd see to that. You'd sigh and go to work again, beginning at the beginning where you were years ago, and doing it all over. Admirable resignation, but not for me! I'm a stockholder in his company and in shape to `take steps'! I don't know if I'd be patient enough to make them legal--perhaps I should. He may be safe on the legal side. I'll know more about that when I find out if there is a Prince Moliterno in Naples who owns land in Basilicata."

"You don't doubt it?"

"I doubt everything! In this particular matter I'll have less to doubt when I get an answer from the consul-general. I've written, you see."

Lindley looked disturbed. "You have?"

Vilas read him at a glance. "You're afraid to find out!" he cried. Then he set his hand on the other's shoulder. "If there ever was a God's fool, it's you, Dick Lindley. Really, I wonder the world hasn't kicked you around more than it has; you'd never kick back! You're as easy as an old shoe. Cora makes you unhappy," he went on, and with the very mention of her name, his voice shook with passion,--"but on my soul I don't believe you know what jealousy means: you don't even understand hate; you don't eat your heart----"

"Let's go and eat something better," suggested Richard, laughing. "There's a continuous supper downstairs and I hear it's very good."

Ray smiled, rescued for a second from himself. "There isn't anything better than your heart, you old window-pane, and I'm glad you don't eat it. And if I ever mix it up with Don Giovanni T. Corliss--`T' stands for Toreador--I do believe it'll be partly on your----" He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished, as his attention was caught by the abysmal attitude of a figure in another part of the gallery: Mr. Wade Trumble, alone in a corner, sitting upon the small of his small back, munching at an unlighted cigar and otherwise manifesting a biting gloom. Ray drew Lindley's attention to this tableau of pain. "Here's a three of us!" he said. He turned to look down into the rhythmic kaleidoscope of dancers. "And there goes the girl we all ought to be morbid about."

"Who is that?"

"Laura Madison. Why aren't we? What a self-respecting creature she is, with that cool, sweet steadiness of hers--she's like a mountain lake. She's lovely and she plays like an angel, but so far as anybody's ever thinking about her is concerned she might almost as well not exist. Yet she's really beautiful to-night, if you can manage to think of her except as a sort of retinue for Cora."

"She is rather beautiful to-night. Laura's always a very nice-looking girl," said Richard, and with the advent of an idea, he added: "I think one reason she isn't more conspicuous and thought about is that she is so quiet," and, upon his companion's greeting this inspiration with a burst of laughter, "Yes, that was a brilliant deduction," he said; "but I do think she's about the quietest person I ever knew. I've noticed there are times when she'll scarcely speak at all for half an hour, or even more."

"You're not precisely noisy yourself," said Ray. "Have you danced with her this evening?"

"Why, no," returned the other, in a tone which showed this omission to be a discovery; "not yet. I must, of course."

"Yes, she's really `rather' beautiful. Also, she dances `rather' better than any other girl in town. Go and perform your painful duty."

"Perhaps I'd better," said Richard thoughtfully, not perceiving the satire. "At any rate, I'll ask her for the next."

He found it unengaged. There came to Laura's face an April change as he approached, and she saw he meant to ask her to dance. And, as they swam out into the maelstrom, he noticed it, and remarked that it was rather warm, to which she replied by a cheerful nod. Presently there came into Richard's mind the thought that he was really an excellent dancer; but he did not recall that he had always formed the same pleasing estimate of himself when he danced with Laura, nor realize that other young men enjoyed similar self-help when dancing with her. And yet he repeated to her what Ray had said of her dancing, and when she laughed as in appreciation of a thing intended humorously, he laughed, too, but insisted that she did dance "very well indeed." She laughed again at that, and they danced on, not talking. He had no sense of "guiding" her; there was no feeling of effort whatever; she seemed to move spontaneously with his wish, not to his touch; indeed, he was not sensible of touching her at all.

"Why, Laura," he exclaimed suddenly, "you dance beautifully!"

She stumbled and almost fell; saved herself by clutching at his arm; he caught her; and the pair stopped where they were, in the middle of the floor. A flash of dazed incredulity from her dark eyes swept him; there was something in it of the child dodging an unexpected blow.

"Did I trip you?" he asked anxiously.

"No," she laughed, quickly, and her cheeks grew even redder. "I tripped myself. Wasn't that too bad--just when you were thinking that I danced well! Let's sit down. May we?"

They went to some chairs against a wall. There, as they sat, Cora swung by them, dancing again with her lieutenant, and looking up trancedly into the gallant eyes of the triumphant and intoxicated young man. Visibly, she was a woman with a suitor's embracing arm about her. Richard's eyes followed them.

"Ah, don't!" said Laura in a low voice.

He turned to her. "Don't what?"

"I didn't mean to speak out loud," she said tremulously. "But I meant: don't look so troubled. It doesn't mean anything at all--her coquetting with that bird of passage. He's going away in the morning."

"I don't think I was troubling about that."

"Well, whatever it was"--she paused, and laughed with a plaintive timidity--"why, just don't trouble about it!"

"Do I look very much troubled?" he asked seriously.

"Yes. And you don't look very gay when you're not!" She laughed with more assurance now. "I think you're always the wistfulest looking man I ever saw."

"Everybody laughs at me, I believe," he said, with continued seriousness. "Even Ray Vilas thinks I'm an utter fool. Am I, do you think?"

He turned as he spoke and glanced inquiringly into her eyes. What he saw surprised and dismayed him.

"For heaven's sake, don't cry!" he whispered hurriedly.

She bent her head, turning her face from him.

"I've been very hopeful lately," he said. "Cora has been so kind to me since I did what she wanted me to, that I----" He gave a deep sigh. "But if you're that sorry for me, my chances with her must be pretty desperate."

She did not alter her attitude, but with her down-bent face still away from him, said huskily: "It isn't you I'm sorry for. You mustn't ever give up; you must keep on trying and trying. If you give up, I don't know what will become of her!"

A moment later she rose suddenly to her feet. "Let's finish our dance," she said, giving him her hand. "I'm sure I won't stumble again."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The two girls let themselves into the house noiselessly, and, turning out the hall-light, left for them by their mother, crept upstairs on tiptoe; and went through the upper hall directly to Laura's room--Cora's being nearer the sick-room. At their age it is proper that a gayety be used three times: in anticipation, and actually, and in after-rehearsal. The last was of course now in order: they went to Laura's room to "talk it over." There was no gas-fixture in this small chamber; but they found Laura's oil-lamp burning brightly upon her writing-table.

"How queer!" said Laura with some surprise, as she closed the door. "Mother never leaves the lamp lit for me; she's always so afraid of lamps exploding."

"Perhaps Miss Peirce came in here to read, and forgot to turn it out," suggested Cora, seating herself on the edge of the bed and letting her silk wrap fall from her shoulders. "Oh, Laura, wasn't he gorgeous. . . ."

She referred to the gallant defender of our seas, it appeared, and while Laura undressed and got into a wrapper, Cora recounted in detail the history of the impetuous sailor's enthrallment;--a resume predicted three hours earlier by a gleeful whisper hissed across the maritime shoulder as the sisters swung near each other during a waltz: "proposed!"

"I've always heard they're horribly inconstant," she said, regretfully. "But, oh, Laura, wasn't he beautiful to look at! Do you think he's more beautiful than Val? No--don't tell me if you do. I don't want to hear it! Val was so provoking: he didn't seem to mind it at all. He's nothing but a big brute sometimes: he wouldn't even admit that he minded, when I asked him. I was idiot enough to ask; I couldn't help it; he was so tantalizing and exasperating--laughing at me. I never knew anybody like him; he's so sure of himself and he can be so cold. Sometimes I wonder if he really cares about anything, deep down in his heart--anything except himself. He seems so selfish: there are times when he almost makes me hate him; but just when I get to thinking I do, I find I don't--he's so deliciously strong, and there's such a big luxury in being understood: I always feel he knows me clear to the bone, somehow! But, oh," she sighed regretfully, "doesn't a uniform become a man? They ought to all wear 'em. It would look silly on such a little goat as that Wade Trumble, though: nothing could make him look like a whole man. Did you see him glaring at me? Beast! I was going to be so nice and kittenish and do all my prettiest tricks for him, to help Val with his oil company. Val thinks Wade would come in yet, if I'D only get him in the mood to have another talk with Val about it; but the spiteful little rat wouldn't come near me. I believe that was one of the reasons Val laughed at me and pretended not to mind my getting proposed to. He must have minded; he couldn't have helped minding it, really. That's his way; he's so mean--he won't show things. He knows me. I can't keep anything from him; he reads me like a signboard; and then about himself he keeps me guessing, and I can't tell when I've guessed right. Ray Vilas behaved disgustingly, of course; he was horrid and awful. I might have expected it. I suppose Richard was wailing his tiresome sorrows on your poor shoulder----"

"No," said Laura. "He was very cheerful. He seemed glad you were having a good time."

"He didn't look particularly cheerful at me. I never saw so slow a man: I wonder when he's going to find out about that pendant. Val would have seen it the instant I put it on. And, oh, Laura! isn't George Wattling funny? He's just soft! He's good-looking though," she continued pensively, adding, "I promised to motor out to the Country Club with him to-morrow for tea."

"Oh, Cora," protested Laura, "no! Please don't!"

"I've promised; so I'll have to, now." Cora laughed. "It'll do Mary Kane good. Oh, I'm not going to bother much with him--he makes me tired. I never saw anything so complacent as that girl when she came in to-night, as if her little Georgie was the greatest capture the world had ever seen. . . ."

She chattered on. Laura, passive, listened with a thoughtful expression, somewhat preoccupied. The talker yawned at last.

"It must be after three," she said, listlessly, having gone over her evening so often that the colours were beginning to fade. She yawned again. "Laura," she remarked absently, "I don't see how you can sleep in this bed; it sags so."

"I've never noticed it," said her sister. "It's a very comfortable old bed."

Cora went to her to be unfastened, reverting to the lieutenant during the operation, and kissing the tire-woman warmly at its conclusion. "You're always so sweet to me, Laura," she said affectionately. "I don't know how you manage it. You're so good"--she laughed--"sometimes I wonder how you stand me. If I were you, I'm positive I couldn't stand me at all!" Another kiss and a hearty embrace, and she picked up her wrap and skurried silently through the hall to her own room.

It was very late, but Laura wrote for almost an hour in her book (which was undisturbed) before she felt drowsy. Then she extinguished the lamp, put the book away and got into bed.

It was almost as if she had attempted to lie upon the empty air: the mattress sagged under her weight as if it had been a hammock; and something tore with a ripping sound. There was a crash, and a choked yell from a muffled voice somewhere, as the bed gave way. For an instant, Laura fought wildly in an entanglement of what she insufficiently perceived to be springs, slats and bedclothes with something alive squirming underneath. She cleared herself and sprang free, screaming, but even in her fright she remembered her father and clapped her hand over her mouth that she might keep from screaming again. She dove at the door, opened it, and fled through the hall to Cora's room, still holding her hand over her mouth.

"Cora! Oh, Cora!" she panted, and flung herself upon her sister's bed.

Cora was up instantly; and had lit the gas in a trice. "There's a burglar!" Laura contrived to gasp. "In my room! Under the bed!"

"What!"

"I fell on him! Something's the matter with the bed. It broke. I fell on him!"

Cora stared at her wide-eyed. "Why, it can't be. Think how long I was in there. Your bed broke, and you just thought there was some one there. You imagined it."

"No, no, no!" wailed Laura. "I heard him: he gave a kind of dreadful grunt."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure? He wriggled--oh! I could feel him!"

Cora seized a box of matches again. "I'm going to find out." "Oh, no, no!" protested Laura, cowering.

"Yes, I am. If there's a burglar in the house I'm going to find him!"

"We mustn't wake papa."

"No, nor mamma either. You stay here if you want to----"

"Let's call Hedrick," suggested the pallid Laura; "or put our heads out of the window and scream for----"

Cora laughed; she was not in the least frightened. "That wouldn't wake papa, of course! If we had a telephone I'd send for the police; but we haven't. I'm going to see if there's any one there. A burglar's a man, I guess, and I can't imagine myself being afraid of any man!"

Laura clung to her, but Cora shook her off and went through the hall undaunted, Laura faltering behind her. Cora lighted matches with a perfectly steady hand; she hesitated on the threshold of Laura's room no more than a moment, then lit the lamp.

Laura stifled a shriek at sight of the bed. "Look, look!" she gasped.

"There's no one under it now, that's certain," said Cora, and boldly lifted a corner of it. "Why, it's been cut all to pieces from underneath! You're right; there was some one here. It's practically dismembered. Don't you remember my telling you how it sagged? And I was only sitting on the edge of it! The slats have all been moved out of place, and as for the mattress, it's just a mess of springs and that stuffing stuff. He must have thought the silver was hidden there."

"Oh, oh, oh!" moaned Laura. "He wriggled----ugh!"

Cora picked up the lamp. "Well, we've got to go over the house----"

"No, no!"

"Hush! I'll go alone then."

"You can't."

"I will, though!"

The two girls had changed places in this emergency. In her fright Laura was dependent, clinging: actual contact with the intruder had unnerved her. It took all her will to accompany her sister upon the tour of inspection, and throughout she cowered behind the dauntless Cora. It was the first time in their lives that their positions had been reversed. From the days of Cora's babyhood, Laura had formed the habit of petting and shielding the little sister, but now that the possibility became imminent of confronting an unknown and dangerous man, Laura was so shaken that, overcome by fear, she let Cora go first. Cora had not boasted in vain of her bravery; in truth, she was not afraid of any man.

They found the fastenings of the doors secure and likewise those of all the windows, until they came to the kitchen. There, the cook had left a window up, which plausibly explained the marauder's mode of ingress. Then, at Cora's insistence, and to Laura's shivering horror, they searched both cellar and garret, and concluded that he had escaped by the same means. Except Laura's bed, nothing in the house had been disturbed; but this eccentricity on the part of a burglar, though it indeed struck the two girls as peculiar, was not so pointedly mysterious to them as it might have been had they possessed a somewhat greater familiarity with the habits of criminals whose crimes are professional.

They finally retired, Laura sleeping with her sister, and Cora had begun to talk of the lieutenant again, instead of the burglar, before Laura fell asleep.

In spite of the short hours for sleep, both girls appeared at the breakfast-table before the meal was over, and were naturally pleased with the staccato of excitement evoked by their news. Mrs. Madison and Miss Peirce were warm in admiration of their bravery, but in the same breath condemned it as foolhardy.

"I never knew such wonderful girls!" exclaimed the mother, almost tearfully. "You crazy little lions! To think of your not even waking Hedrick! And you didn't have even a poker and were in your bare feet--and went down in the cellar----"

"It was all Cora," protested Laura. "I'm a hopeless, disgusting coward. I never knew what a coward I was before. Cora carried the lamp and went ahead like a drum-major. I just trailed along behind her, ready to shriek and run--or faint!"

"Could you tell anything about him when you fell on him?" inquired Miss Peirce. "What was his voice like when he shouted?"

"Choked. It was a horrible, jolted kind of cry. It hardly sounded human."

"Could you tell anything about whether he was a large man, or small, or----"

"Only that he seemed very active. He seemed to be kicking. He wriggled----ugh!"

They evolved a plausible theory of the burglar's motives and line of reasoning. "You see," said Miss Peirce, much stirred, in summing up the adventure, "he either jimmies the window, or finds it open already, and Sarah's mistaken and she did leave it open! Then he searched the downstairs first, and didn't find anything. Then he came upstairs, and was afraid to come into any of the rooms where we were. He could tell which rooms had people in them by hearing us breathing through the keyholes. He finds two rooms empty, and probably he made a thorough search of Miss Cora's first. But he isn't after silver toilet articles and pretty little things like that. He wants really big booty or none, so he decides that an out-of-the-way, unimportant room like Miss Laura's is where the family would be most apt to hide valuables, jewellery and silver, and he knows that mattresses have often been selected as hiding-places; so he gets under the bed and goes to work. Then Miss Cora and Miss Laura come in so quietly--not wanting to wake anybody--that he doesn't hear them, and he gets caught there. That's the way it must have been."

"But why," Mrs. Madison inquired of this authority, "why do you suppose he lit the lamp?"

"To see by," answered the ready Miss Peirce. It was accepted as final.

Further discussion was temporarily interrupted by the discovery that Hedrick had fallen asleep in his chair.

"Don't bother him, Cora," said his mother. "He's finished eating--let him sleep a few minutes, if he wants to, before he goes to school. He's not at all well. He played too hard, yesterday afternoon, and hurt his knee, he said. He came down limping this morning and looking very badly. He oughtn't to run and climb about the stable so much after school. See how utterly exhausted he looks!--Not even this excitement can keep him awake."

"I think we must be careful not to let Mr. Madison suspect anything about the burglar," said Miss Peirce. "It would be bad for him."

Laura began: "But we ought to notify the police----"

"Police!" Hedrick woke so abruptly, and uttered the word with such passionate and vehement protest, that everybody started. "I suppose you want to kill your father, Laura Madison!"

"How?"

"Do you suppose he wouldn't know something had happened with a squad of big, heavy policemen tromping all over the house? The first thing they'd do would be to search the whole place----"

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Madison quickly. "It wouldn't do at all."

"I should think not! I'm glad," continued Hedrick, truthfully, "that idea's out of your head! I believe Laura imagined the whole thing anyway."

"Have you looked at her mattress," inquired Cora, "darling little boy?"

He gave her a concentrated look, and rose to leave. "Nothin' on earth but imagina----" He stopped with a grunt as he forgetfully put his weight on his left leg. He rubbed his knee, swallowed painfully, and, leaving the word unfinished, limped haughtily from the room.

He left the house, gloomily swinging his books from a spare length of strap, and walking with care to ease his strains and bruises as much as possible. He was very low in his mind, that boy. His fortunes had reached the ebb-tide, but he had no hope of a rise. He had no hope of anything. It was not even a consolation that, through his talent for surprise in waylayings, it had lately been thought necessary, by the Villard family, to have Egerton accompanied to and from school by a man-servant. Nor was Hedrick more deeply depressed by the certainty that both public and domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this important change of career at home. He had been truant a full fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless pride--now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in him for anything but dejection.

He walked two blocks in the direction of his school; turned a corner; walked half a block; turned north in the alley which ran parallel to Corliss Street, and a few moments later had cautiously climbed into an old, disused refuse box which stood against the rear wall of the empty stable at his own home. He pried up some loose boards at the bottom of the box, and entered a tunnel which had often and often served in happier days--when he had friends--for the escape of Union officers from Libby Prison and Andersonville. Emerging, wholly soiled, into a box-stall, he crossed the musty carriage house and ascended some rickety steps to a long vacant coachman's-room, next to the hayloft. He closed the door, bolted it, and sank moodily upon a broken, old horsehair sofa.

This apartment was his studio. In addition to the sofa, it contained an ex-bureau, three chair-like shapes, a once marble-topped table, now covered with a sheet of zinc, two empty bird cages, and a condemned whatnot. The walls were rather over-decorated in coloured chalks, the man-headed-snake motive predominating; they were also loopholed for firing into the hayloft. Upon the table lay a battered spy-glass, minus lenses, and, nearby, two boxes, one containing dried corn-silk, the other hayseed, convenient for the making of amateur cigarettes; the smoker's outfit being completed by a neat pile of rectangular clippings from newspapers. On the shelves of the whatnot were some fragments of a dead pie, the relics of a "Fifteen-Puzzle," a pink Easter-egg, four seashells, a tambourine with part of a girl's face still visible in aged colours, about two thirds of a hot-water bag, a tintype of Hedrick, and a number of books: several by Henty, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," "100 Practical Jokes, Easy to Perform," "The Jungle Book," "My Lady Rotha," a "Family Atlas," "Three Weeks," "Pilgrim's Progress," "A Boy's Life in Camp," and "The Mystery of the Count's Bedroom."

The gloomy eye of Hedrick wandered to "The Mystery of the Count's Bedroom," and remained fixed upon it moodily and contemptuously. His own mystery made that one seem tame and easy: Laura's bedroom laid it all over the Count's, in his conviction; and with a soul too weary of pain to shudder, he reviewed the bafflements and final catastrophe of the preceding night.

He had not essayed the attempt upon the mattress until assured that the house was wrapped in slumber. Then, with hope in his heart, he had stolen to Laura's room, lit the lamp, feeling safe from intrusion, and set to work. His implement at first was a long hatpin of Cora's. Lying on his back beneath the bed, and, moving the slats as it became necessary, he sounded every cubic inch of the mysterious mattress without encountering any obstruction which could reasonably be supposed to be the ledger. This was not more puzzling than it was infuriating, since by all processes of induction, deduction, and pure logic, the thing was necessarily there. It was nowhere else. Therefore it was there. It had to be there! With the great blade of his Boy Scout's knife he began to disembowel the mattress.

For a time he had worked furiously and effectively, but the position was awkward, the search laborious, and he was obliged to rest frequently. Besides, he had waited to a later hour than he knew, for his mother to go to bed, and during one of his rests he incautiously permitted his eyes to close. When he woke, his sisters were in the room, and he thought it advisable to remain where he was, though he little realized how he had weakened his shelter. When Cora left the room, he heard Laura open the window, sigh, and presently a tiny clinking and a click set him a-tingle from head to foot: she was opening the padlocked book. The scratching sound of a pen followed. And yet she had not come near the bed. The mattress, then, was a living lie.

With infinite caution he had moved so that he could see her, arriving at a coign of vantage just as she closed the book. She locked it, wrapped it in an oilskin cover which lay beside it on the table, hung the key-chain round her neck, rose, yawned, and, to his violent chagrin, put out the light. He heard her moving but could not tell where, except that it was not in his part of the room. Then a faint shuffling warned him that she was approaching the bed, and he withdrew his head to avoid being stepped upon. The next moment the world seemed to cave in upon him.

Laura's flight had given him opportunity to escape to his own room unobserved; there to examine, bathe and bind his wounds, and to rectify his first hasty impression that he had been fatally mangled.

Hedrick glared at "The Mystery of the Count's Bedroom."

By and by he got up, brought the book to the sofa and began to read it over.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The influence of a familiar and sequestered place is not only soothing; the bruised mind may often find it restorative. Thus Hedrick, in his studio, surrounded by his own loved bric-a-brac, began to feel once more the stir of impulse. Two hours' reading inspired him. What a French reporter (in the Count's bedroom) could do, an American youth in full possession of his powers--except for a strained knee and other injuries--could do. Yes, and would!

He evolved a new chain of reasoning. The ledger had been seen in Laura's room; it had been heard in her room; it appeared to be kept in her room. But it was in no single part of the room. All the parts make a whole. Therefore, the book was not in the room.

On the other hand, Laura had not left the room when she took the book from its hiding-place. This was confusing; therefore he determined to concentrate logic solely upon what she had done with the ledger when she finished writing in it. It was dangerous to assume that she had restored it to the place whence she obtained it, because he had already proved that place to be both in the room and out of the room. No; the question he must keep in was: What did she do with it?

Laura had not left the room. But the book had left the room.

Arrived at this inevitable deduction, he sprang to his feet in a state of repressed excitement and began to pace the floor--like a hound on the trail. Laura had not left the room, but the book had left the room: he must keep his mind upon this point. He uttered a loud exclamation and struck the zinc table-top a smart blow with his clenched fist.

Laura had thrown the book out of the window!

In the exaltation of this triumph, he forgot that it was not yet the hour for a scholar's reappearance, and went forth in haste to search the ground beneath the window--a disappointing quest, for nowhere in the yard was there anything but withered grass, and the rubbish of other frost-bitten vegetation. His mother, however, discovered something else, and, opening the kitchen window, she asked, with surprise:

"Why, Hedrick, what on earth are you doing here?"

"Me?" inquired Hedrick.

"What are you doing here?"

"Here?" Evidently she puzzled him.

She became emphatic. "I want to know what you are doing."

"Just standing here," he explained in a meek, grieved way.

"But why aren't you at school?"

This recalled what he had forgotten, and he realized the insecurity of his position. "Oh, yes," he said--"school. Did you ask me----"

"Didn't you go to school?"

He began to speak rapidly. "Didn't I go to school? Well, where else could I go? Just because I'm here now doesn't mean I didn't go, does it? Because a person is in China right now wouldn't have to mean he'd never been in South America, would it?"

"Then what's the matter?"

"Well, I was going along, and you know I didn't feel very well and----" He paused, with the advent of a happier idea, then continued briskly: "But that didn't stop me, because I thought I ought to go if I dropped, so I went ahead, but the teacher was sick and they couldn't get a substitute. She must have been pretty sick, she looked so pale----"

"They dismissed the class?"

"And I don't have to go to-morrow either."

"I see," said his mother. "But if you feel ill, Hedrick, hadn't you better come in and lie down?"

"I think it's kind of passing off. The fresh air seems to be doing me good."

"Be careful of your sore knee, dear." She closed the window, and he was left to continue his operations in safety.

Laura had thrown the ledger out of the window; that was proved absolutely. Obviously, she had come down before daylight and retrieved it. Or, she had not. Proceeding on the assumption that she had not, he lifted his eyes and searched the air. Was it possible that the book, though thrown from the window, had never reached the ground? The branches of an old and stalwart maple, now almost divested of leaves, extended in rough symmetry above him, and one big limb, reaching out toward the house, came close to Laura's windows. Triumph shown again from the shrewd countenance of the sleuth: Laura must have slid the ledger along a wire into a hollow branch. However, no wire was to be seen--and the shrewd countenance of the sleuth fell. But perhaps she had constructed a device of silk threads, invisible from below, which carried the book into the tree. Action!

He climbed carefully but with many twinges, finally pausing in a parlous situation not far from the mysterious window which Laura had opened the night before. A comprehensive survey of the tree revealed only the very patent fact that none of the branches was of sufficient diameter to conceal the ledger. No silk threads came from the window. He looked and looked and looked at that window; then his eye fell a little, halted less than three feet below the window-ledge, and the search was ended.

The kitchen window which his mother had opened was directly beneath Laura's, and was a very long, narrow window, in the style of the house, and there was a protecting stone ledge above it. Upon this ledge lay the book, wrapped in its oil-skin covering and secured from falling by a piece of broken iron hooping, stuck in the mortar of the bricks. It could be seen from nowhere save an upper window of the house next door, or from the tree itself, and in either case only when the leaves had fallen.

Laura had felt very safe. No one had ever seen the book except that night, early in August, when, for a better circulation of air, she had left her door open as she wrote, and Hedrick had come upon her. He had not spoken of it again; she perceived that he had forgotten it; and she herself forgot that the memory of a boy is never to be depended on; its forgettings are too seldom permanent in the case of things that ought to stay forgotten.

To get the book one had only to lean from the window.

* * *

Hedrick seemed so ill during lunch that his mother spoke of asking Doctor Sloane to look at him, if he did not improve before evening. Hedrick said meekly that perhaps that would be best--if he did not improve. After a futile attempt to eat, he courteously excused himself from the table--a ceremony which made even Cora fear that his case might be serious--and, going feebly to the library, stretched himself upon the sofa. His mother put a rug over him; Hedrick, thanking her touchingly, closed his eyes; and she went away, leaving him to slumber.

After a time, Laura came into the room on an errand, walking noiselessly, and, noticing that his eyes were open, apologized for waking him.

"Never mind," he returned, in the tone of an invalid. "I didn't sleep sound. I think there's something the matter inside my head: I have such terrible dreams. I guess maybe it's better for me to keep awake. I'm kind of afraid to go to sleep. Would you mind staying here with me a little while?"

"Certainly I'll stay," she said, and, observing that his cheeks were flushed, and his eyes unusually bright, she laid a cool hand on his forehead. "You haven't any fever, dear; that's good. You'll be all right to-morrow. Would you like me to read to you?"

"I believe," he answered, plaintively, "reading might kind of disturb my mind: my brain feels so sort of restless and queer. I'd rather play some kind of game."

"Cards?"

"No, not cards exactly. Something' I can do lying down. Oh, I know! You remember the one where we drew pictures and the others had to guess what they were? Well, I've invented a game like that. You sit down at the desk over there and take some sheets of paper. I'll tell you the rest."

She obeyed. "What next?"

"Now, I'll describe some people and where they live and not tell who they are, and you see if you can guess their names and addresses."

"Addresses, too?"

"Yes, because I'm going to describe the way their houses look. Write each name on a separate sheet of paper, and the number of their house below it if you know it, and if you don't know it, just the street. If it's a woman: put `Miss' or `Mrs.' before their name and if it's a man write `Esquire' after it."

"Is all that necessary for the game?"

"It's the way I invented it and I think you might----"

"Oh, all right," she acquiesced, good-naturedly. "It shall be according to your rules."

"Then afterward, you give me the sheets of paper with the names and addresses written on 'em, and we--we----" He hesitated.

"Yes. What do we do then?"

"I'll tell you when we come to it." But when that stage of his invention was reached, and Laura had placed the inscribed sheets in his hand, his interest had waned, it appeared. Also, his condition had improved.

"Let's quit. I thought this game would be more exciting," he said, sitting up. "I guess," he added with too much modesty, "I'm not very good at inventing games. I b'lieve I'll go out to the barn; I think the fresh air----"

"Do you feel well enough to go out?" she asked. "You do seem to be all right, though."

"Yes, I'm a lot better, I think." He limped to the door. "The fresh air will be the best thing for me."

She did not notice that he carelessly retained her contributions to the game, and he reached his studio with them in his hand. Hedrick had entered the 'teens and he was a reader: things in his head might have dismayed a Borgia.

No remotest glimpse entered that head of the enormity of what he did. To put an end to his punishing of Cora, and, to render him powerless against that habitual and natural enemy, Laura had revealed a horrible incident in his career--it had become a public scandal; he was the sport of fools; and it might be months before the thing was lived down. Now he had the means, as he believed, to even the score with both sisters at a stroke. To him it was turning a tremendous and properly scathing joke upon them. He did not hesitate.

* * *

That evening, as Richard Lindley sat at dinner with his mother, Joe Varden temporarily abandoned his attendance at the table to answer the front doorbell. Upon his return, he remarked:

"Messenger-boy mus' been in big hurry. Wouldn' wait till I git to door."

"What was it?" asked Richard.

"Boy with package. Least, I reckon it were a boy. Call' back from the front walk, say he couldn' wait. Say he lef' package in vestibule."

"What sort of a package?"

"Middle-size kind o' big package."

"Why don't you see what it is, Richard?" Mrs. Lindley asked of her son. "Bring it to the table, Joe."

When it was brought, Richard looked at the superscription with surprise. The wrapper was of heavy brown paper, and upon it a sheet of white notepaper had been pasted, with the address:

"Richard Lindley, Esq., 1218 Corliss Street."

"It's from Laura Madison," he said, staring at this writing. "What in the world would Laura be sending me?"

"You might possibly learn by opening it," suggested his mother. "I've seen men puzzle over the outside of things quite as often as women. Laura Madison is a nice girl." She never volunteered similar praise of Laura Madison's sister. Mrs. Lindley had submitted to her son's plans concerning Cora, lately confided; but her submission lacked resignation.

"It's a book," said Richard, even more puzzled, as he took the ledger from its wrappings. "Two little torn places at the edge of the covers. Looks as if it had once had clasps----"

"Perhaps it's the Madison family album," Mrs. Lindley suggested. "Pictures of Cora since infancy. I imagine she's had plenty taken."

"No." He opened the book and glanced at the pages covered in Laura's clear, readable hand. "No, it's about half full of writing. Laura must have turned literary." He read a line or two, frowning mildly. "My soul! I believe it's a novel! She must think I'm a critic--to want me to read it." Smiling at the idea, he closed the ledger. "I'll take it upstairs to my hang-out after dinner, and see if Laura's literary manner has my august approval. Who in the world would ever have thought she'd decide to set up for a writer?"

"I imagine she might have something to write worth reading," said his mother. "I've always thought she was an interesting-looking girl."

"Yes, she is. She dances well, too."

"Of course," continued Mrs. Lindley, thoughtfully, "she seldom says anything interesting, but that may be because she so seldom has a chance to say anything at all."

Richard refused to perceive this allusion. "Curious that Laura should have sent it to me," he said. "She's never seemed interested in my opinion about anything. I don't recall her ever speaking to me on any subject whatever--except one."

He returned his attention to his plate, but his mother did not appear to agree with him that the topic was exhausted.

"`Except one'?" she repeated, after waiting for some time.

"Yes," he replied, in his habitual preoccupied and casual tone. "Or perhaps two. Not more than two, I should say--and in a way you'd call that only one, of course. Bread, Joe."

"What two, Richard?"

"Cora," he said, with gentle simplicity, "and me."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mrs. Lindley had arranged for her son a small apartment on the second floor, and it was in his own library and smoking-room that Richard, comfortable in a leather-chair by a reading-lamp, after dinner, opened Laura's ledger.

The first page displayed no more than a date now eighteen months past, and the line:

"Love came to me to-day."

The next page was dated the next day, and, beneath, he read:

"That was all I could write, yesterday. I think I was too excited to write. Something seemed to be singing in my breast. I couldn't think in sentences--not even in words. How queer it is that I had decided to keep a diary, and bound this book for it, and now the first thing I have written in it was that! It will not be a diary. It shall be your book. I shall keep it sacred to You and write to You in it. How strange it will be if the day ever comes when I shall show it to You! If it should, you would not laugh at it, for of course the day couldn't come unless you understood. I cannot think it will ever come--that day! But maybe---- No, I mustn't let myself hope too much that it will, because if I got to hoping too much, and you didn't like me, it would hurt too much. People who expect nothing are never disappointed--I must keep that in mind. Yet every girl has a right to hope for her own man to come for her some time, hasn't she? It's not easy to discipline the wanting to hope--since yesterday!

"I think I must always have thought a great deal about you without knowing it. We really know so little what we think: our minds are going on all the time and we hardly notice them. It is like a queer sort of factory--the owner only looks in once in a while and most of the time hasn't any idea what sort of goods his spindles are turning out.

"I saw You yesterday! It seems to me the strangest thing in the world. I've seen you by chance, probably two or three times a month nearly all my life, though you so seldom come here to call. And this time wasn't different from dozens of other times--you were just standing on the corner by the Richfield, waiting for a car. The only possible difference is that you had been out of town for several months--Cora said so this morning--and how ridiculous it seems now, didn't even know it! I hadn't noticed it--not with the top part of my mind, but perhaps the deep part that does the real thinking had noticed it and had mourned your absence and was so glad to see you again that it made the top part suddenly see the wonderful truth!"

Lindley set down the ledger to relight his cigar. It struck him that Laura had been writing "very odd Stuff," but interesting; and certainly it was not a story. Vaguely he recalled Marie Bashkirtseff: hadn't she done something like this? He resumed the reading:

"You turned and spoke to me in that lovely, cordial, absent-minded way of yours--though I'd never thought (with the top part) what a lovely way it was; and for a moment I only noticed how nice you looked in a light gray suit, because I'd only seen you in black for so long, while you'd been in mourning for your brother."

Richard, disturbed by an incredible idea, read these last words over and then dismissed the notion as nonsense.

". . . While you'd been in mourning for your brother--and it struck me that light gray was becoming to you. Then such a queer thing happened: I felt the great kindness of your eyes. I thought they were full of--the only word that seems to express it at all is charity--and they had a sweet, faraway look, too, and I've always thought that a look of wistful kindness was the loveliest look in the world--and you had it, and I saw it and then suddenly, as you held your hat in your hand, the sunshine on your hair seemed brighter than any sunshine I had ever seen--and I began to tremble all over. I didn't understand what was the matter with me or what had made me afraid with you not of you--all at once, but I was so hopelessly rattled that instead of waiting for the car, as I'd just told you I meant to, I said I'd decided to walk, and got away--without any breath left to breathe with! I couldn't have gotten on the car with you--- and I couldn't have spoken another word.

"And as I walked home, trembling all the way, I saw that strange, dazzling sunshine on your hair, and the wistful, kind look in your eyes--you seemed not to have taken the car but to have come with me--and I was uplifted and exalted oh, so strangely--oh, how the world was changing for me! And when I got near home, I began to walk faster, and on the front path I broke into a run and rushed in the house to the piano--and it was as if my fingers were thirsty for the keys! Then I saw that I was playing to you and knew that I loved you.

"I love you!

"How different everything is now from everything before. Music means what it never did: Life has leaped into blossom for me. Everywhere there is colour and radiance that I had never seen--the air is full of perfume. Dear, the sunshine that fell upon your head has spread over the world!

"I understand, as I never understood, that the world--so dazzling to me now--was made for love and is meaningless without it. The years until yesterday are gray--no, not gray, because that was the colour You were wearing--not gray, because that is a beautiful colour. The empty years until yesterday had no colour at all. Yes, the world has meaning only through loving, and without meaning there is no real life. We live only by loving, and now that this gift of life has come to me I love all the world. I feel that I must be so kind, kind, kind to everybody! Such an odd thing struck me as my greatest wish. When I was little, I remember grandmother telling me how, when she was a child in pioneer days, the women made the men's clothes--homespun--and how a handsome young Circuit Rider, who was a bachelor, seemed to her the most beautifully dressed man she had ever seen. The women of the different churches made his clothes, as they did their husbands' and brothers.' you see--only better! It came into my head that that would be the divinest happiness that I could know--to sew for you! If you and I lived in those old, old times--you look as if you belonged to them, you know, dear--and You were the young minister riding into the settlement on a big bay horse--and all the girls at the window, of course!--and I sewing away at the homespun for you!--I think all the angels of heaven would be choiring in my heart--and what thick, warm clothes I'd make you for winter! Perhaps in heaven they'll let some of the women sew for the men they love--I wonder!

"I hear Cora's voice from downstairs as I write. She's often so angry with Ray, poor girl. It does not seem to me that she and Ray really belong to each other, though they say so often that they do."

Richard having read thus far with a growing, vague uneasiness, looked up, frowning. He hoped Laura had no Marie Bashkirtseff idea of publishing this manuscript. It was too intimate, he thought, even if the names in it were to be disguised.

. . . "Though they say so often that they do. I think Ray is in love with her, but it can't be like this. What he feels must be something wholly different--there is violence and wildness in it. And they are bitter with each other so often-- always `getting even' for something. He does care--he is frantically `in love' with her, undoubtedly, but so insanely jealous. I suppose all jealousy is insane. But love is the only sanity. How can what is insane be part of it? I could not be jealous of You. I owe life to you--I have never lived till now."

The next writing was two days later:

. . . . "To-day as I passed your house with Cora, I kept looking at the big front door at which you go in and out so often--your door! I never knew that just a door could look so beautiful! And unconsciously I kept my eyes on it, as we walked on, turning my head and looking and looking back at it, till Cora suddenly burst out laughing, and said: `Well, Laura!' And I came to myself--and found her looking at me. It was like getting back after a journey, and for a second I was a little dazed, and Cora kept on laughing at me, and I felt myself getting red. I made some silly excuse about thinking your house had been repainted--and she laughed louder than ever. I was afraid then that she understood--I wonder if she could have? I hope not, though I love her so much I don't know why I would rather she didn't know, unless it is just my feeling about it. It is a guardian feeling--that I must keep for myself, the music of these angels singing in my heart--singing of You. I hope she did not understand--and I so fear she did. Why should I be so afraid?" . . .

. . . . "Two days since I have talked to You in your book after Cora caught me staring at your door and laughed at me--and ten minutes ago I was sitting beside the actual You on the porch! I am trembling yet. It was the first time you'd come for months and months; and yet you had the air of thinking it rather a pleasant thing to do as you came up the steps! And a dizzy feeling came over me, because I wondered if it was seeing me on the street that day that put it into your head to come. It seemed too much happiness--and risking too much--to let myself believe it, but I couldn't help just wondering. I began to tremble as I saw you coming up our side of the street in the moonlight--and when you turned in here I was all panic--I nearly ran into the house. I don't know how I found voice to greet you. I didn't seem to have any breath left at all. I was so relieved when Cora took a chair between us and began to talk to you, because I'm sure I couldn't have. She and poor Ray had been having one of their quarrels and she was punishing him. Poor boy, he seemed so miserable--though he tried to talk to me--about politics, I think, though I'm not sure, because I couldn't listen much better than either of us could talk. I could only hear Your voice--such a rich, quiet voice, and it has a sound like the look you have--friendly and faraway and wistful. I have thought and thought about what it is that makes you look wistful. You have less to wish for than anybody else in the world because you have Yourself. So why are you wistful? I think it's just because you are!

"I heard Cora asking you why you hadn't come to see us for so long, and then she said: `Is it because you dislike me? You look at me, sometimes, as if you dislike me!' And I wished she hadn't said it. I had a feeling you wouldn't like that `personal' way of talking that she enjoys--and that--oh, it didn't seem to be in keeping with the dignity of You! And I love Cora so much I wanted her to be finer--with You. I wanted her to understand you better than to play those little charming tricks at you. You are so good, so high, that if she could make a real friend of you I think it would be the best thing for her that could happen. She's never had a man-friend. Perhaps she was trying to make one of you and hasn't any other way to go about it. She can be so really sweet, I wanted you to see that side of her.

"Afterwhile, when Ray couldn't bear it any longer to talk to me, and in his desperation brazenly took Cora to the other end of the porch almost by force, and I was left, in a way, alone with you what did you think of me? I was tongue-tied! Oh, oh, oh! You were quiet--but I was dumb! My heart wasn't dumb--it hammered! All the time I kept saying to myself such a jumble of things. And into the jumble would come such a rapture that You were there--it was like a paean of happiness--a chanting of the glory of having You near me--I was mixed up! I could play all those confused things, but writing them doesn't tell it. Writing them would only be like this: `He's here, he's here! Speak, you little fool! He's here, he's here! He's sitting beside you! speak, idiot, or he'll never come back! He's here, he's beside you you could put out your hand and touch him! Are you dead, that you can't speak? He's here, he's here, he's here!'

"Ah, some day I shall be able to talk to you--but not till I get more used to this inner song. It seems to will that nothing else shall come from my lips till it does!

"In spite of my silence--my outward woodenness--you said, as you went away, that you would come again! You said `soon'! I could only nod but Cora called from the other end of the porch and asked: `How soon?' Oh, I bless her for it, because you said, `Day after to-morrow.' Day after tomorrow! Day after to-morrow! Day after tomorrow!

. . . . "Twenty-one hours since I wrote--no, sang--`Day after to-morrow!' And now it is `To-morrow!' Oh, the slow, golden day that this has been! I could not stay in the house--I walked--no, I winged! I was in the open country before I knew it--with You! For You are in everything. I never knew the sky was blue, before. Until now I just thought it was the sky. The whitest clouds I ever saw sailed over that blue, and I stood upon the prow of each in turn, then leaped in and swam to the next and sailed with it! Oh, the beautiful sky, and kind, green woods and blessed, long, white, dusty country road! Never in my life shall I forget that walk--this day in the open with my love--You! To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow!"

The next writing in Laura's book was dated more than two months later:

. . . . "I have decided to write again in this book. I have thought it all out carefully, and I have come to the conclusion that it can do no harm and may help me to be steady and sensible. It is the thought, not its expression, that is guilty, but I do not believe that my thoughts are guilty: I believe that they are good. I know that I wish only good. I have read that when people suffer very much the best thing is for them to cry. And so I'll let myself write out my feelings--and perhaps get rid of some of the silly self-pity I'm foolish enough to feel, instead of going about choked up with it. How queer it is that even when we keep our thoughts respectable we can't help having absurd feelings like self-pity, even though we know how rotten stupid they are! Yes, I'll let it all out here, and then, some day, when I've cured myself all whole again, I'll burn this poor, silly old book. And if I'm not cured before the wedding, I'll burn it then, anyhow.

"How funny little girls are! From the time they're little bits of things they talk about marriage--whom they are going to marry, what sort of person it will be. I think Cora and I began when she was about five and I not seven. And as girls grow up, I don't believe there was ever one who genuinely expected to be an old maid. The most unattractive young girls discuss and plan and expect marriage just as much as the prettier and gayer ones. The only way we can find out that men don't want to marry us is by their not asking us. We don't see ourselves very well, and I honestly believe we all think--way deep down--that we're pretty attractive. At least, every girl has the idea, sometimes, that if men only saw the whole truth they'd think her as nice as any other girl, and really nicer than most others. But I don't believe I have any hallucinations of that sort about myself left. I can't imagine--now--any man seeing anything in me that would make him care for me. I can't see anything about me to care for, myself. Sometimes I think maybe I could make a man get excited about me if I could take a startlingly personal tone with him from the beginning, making him wonder all sorts of you-and-I perhapses--but I couldn't do it very well probably--oh, I couldn't make myself do it if I could do it well! And I shouldn't think it would have much effect except upon very inexperienced men--yet it does! Now, I wonder if this is a streak of sourness coming out; I don't feel bitter--I'm just thinking honestly, I'm sure.

"Well, here I am facing it: all through my later childhood, and all through my girlhood, I believe what really occupied me most--with the thought of it underlying all things else, though often buried very deep--was the prospect of my marriage. I regarded it as a certainty: I would grow up, fall in love, get engaged, and be married--of course! So I grew up and fell in love with You--but it stops there, and I must learn how to be an Old Maid and not let anybody see that I mind it. I know this is the hardest part of it, the beginning: it will get easier by-and-by, of course. If I can just manage this part of it, it's bound not to hurt so much later on.

"Yes, I grew up and fell in love with You--for you will always be You. I'll never, never get over that, my dear! You'll never, never know it; but I shall love You always till I die, and if I'm still Me after that, I shall keep right on loving you then, of course. You see, I didn't fall in love with you just to have you for myself. I fell in love with You! And that can never bother you at all nor ever be a shame to me that I love unsought, because you won't know, and because it's just an ocean of good-will, and every beat of my heart sends a new great wave of it toward you and Cora. I shall find happiness, I believe, in service--I am sure there will be times when I can serve you both. I love you both and I can serve her for You and you for her. This isn't a hysterical mood, or a fit of `exaltation': I have thought it all out and I know that I can live up to it. You are the best thing that can ever come into her life, and everything I can do shall be to keep you there. I must be very, very careful with her, for talk and advice do not influence her much. You love her--she has accepted you, and it is beautiful for you both. It must be kept beautiful. It has all become so clear to me: You are just what she has always needed, and if by any mischance she lost you I do not know what would become----"

"Good God!" cried Richard. He sprang to his feet, and the heavy book fell with a muffled crash upon the floor, sprawling open upon its face, its leaves in disorder. He moved away from it, staring at it in incredulous dismay. But he knew.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Memory, that drowsy custodian, had wakened slowly, during this hour, beginning the process with fitful gleams of semi-consciousness, then, irritated, searching its pockets for the keys and dazedly exploring blind passages; but now it flung wide open the gallery doors, and there, in clear light, were the rows of painted canvasses.

He remembered "that day" when he was waiting for a car, and Laura Madison had stopped for a moment, and then had gone on, saying she preferred to walk. He remembered that after he got into the car he wondered why he had not walked home with her; had thought himself "slow" for not thinking of it in time to do it. There had seemed something very "taking" about her, as she stopped and spoke to him, something enlivening and wholesome and sweet--it had struck him that Laura was a "very nice girl." He had never before noticed how really charming she could look; in fact he had never thought much about either of the Madison sisters, who had become "young ladies" during his mourning for his brother. And this pleasant image of Laura remained with him for several days, until he decided that it might be a delightful thing to spend an evening with her. He had called, and he remembered, now, Cora's saying to him that he looked at her sometimes as if he did not like her; he had been surprised and astonishingly pleased to detect a mysterious feeling in her about it.

He remembered that almost at once he had fallen in love with Cora: she captivated him, enraptured him, as she still did--as she always would, he felt, no matter how she treated him or what she did to him. He did not analyze the process of the captivation and enrapturement--for love is a mystery and cannot be analyzed. This is so well known that even Richard Lindley knew it, and did not try!

. . . Heartsick, he stared at the fallen book. He was a man, and here was the proffered love of a woman he did not want. There was a pathos in the ledger; it seemed to grovel, sprawling and dishevelled in the circle of lamp-light on the floor: it was as if Laura herself lay pleading at his feet, and he looked down upon her, compassionate but revolted. He realized with astonishment from what a height she had fallen, how greatly he had respected her, how warmly liked her. What she now destroyed had been more important than he had guessed.

Simple masculine indignation rose within him: she was to have been his sister. If she had been unable to stifle this misplaced love of hers, could she not at least have kept it to herself? Laura, the self-respecting! No; she offered it--offered it to her sister's betrothed. She had written that he should "never, never know it"; that when she was "cured" she would burn the ledger. She had not burned it! There were inconsistencies in plenty in the pitiful screed, but these were the wildest--and the cheapest. In talk, she had urged him to "keep trying," for Cora, and now the sick-minded creature sent him this record. She wanted him to know. Then what else was it but a plea? "I love you. Let Cora go. Take me."

He began to walk up and down, wondering what was to be done. After a time, he picked up the book gingerly, set it upon a shelf in a dark corner, and went for a walk outdoors. The night air seemed better than that of the room that held the ledger.

At the corner a boy, running, passed him. It was Hedrick Madison, but Hedrick did not recognize Richard, nor was his mind at that moment concerned with Richard's affairs; he was on an errand of haste to Doctor Sloane. Mr. Madison had wakened from a heavy slumber unable to speak, his condition obviously much worse.

Hedrick returned in the doctor's car, and then hung uneasily about the door of the sick-room until Laura came out and told him to go to bed. In the morning, his mother did not appear at the breakfast table, Cora was serious and quiet, and Laura said that he need not go to school that day, though she added that the doctor thought their father would get "better." She looked wan and hollow-eyed: she had not been to bed, but declared that she would rest after breakfast. Evidently she had not missed her ledger; and Hedrick watched her closely, a pleasurable excitement stirring in his breast.

She did not go to her room after the meal; the house was cold, possessing no furnace, and, with Hedrick's assistance, she carried out the ashes from the library grate, and built a fire there. She had just lighted it, and the kindling was beginning to crackle, glowing rosily over her tired face, when the bell rang.

"Will you see who it is, please, Hedrick?"

He went with alacrity, and, returning, announced in an odd voice. "It's Dick Lindley. He wants to see you."

"Me?" she murmured, wanly surprised. She was kneeling before the fireplace, wearing an old dress which was dusted with ashes, and upon her hands a pair of worn-out gloves of her father's. Lindley appeared in the hall behind Hedrick, carrying under his arm something wrapped in brown paper. His expression led her to think that he had heard of her father's relapse, and came on that account.

"Don't look at me, Richard," she said, smiling faintly as she rose, and stripping her hands of the clumsy gloves. "It's good of you to come, though. Doctor Sloane thinks he is going to be better again."

Richard inclined his head gravely, but did not speak.

"Well," said Hedrick with a slight emphasis, "I guess I'll go out in the yard a while." And with shining eyes he left the room.

In the hall, out of range from the library door, he executed a triumphant but noiseless caper, and doubled with mirth, clapping his hand over his mouth to stifle the effervescings of his joy. He had recognized the ledger in the same wrapping in which he had left it in Mrs. Lindley's vestibule. His moment had come: the climax of his enormous joke, the repayment in some small measure for the anguish he had so long endured. He crept silently back toward the door, flattened his back against the wall, and listened.

"Richard," he heard Laura say, a vague alarm in her voice, "what is it? What is the matter?"

Then Lindley: "I did not know what to do about it. I couldn't think of any sensible thing. I suppose what I am doing is the stupidest of all the things I thought of, but at least it's honest--so I've brought it back to you myself. Take it, please."

There was a crackling of the stiff wrapping paper, a little pause, then a strange sound from Laura. It was not vocal and no more than just audible: it was a prolonged scream in a whisper.

Hedrick ventured an eye at the crack, between the partly open door and its casing. Lindley stood with his back to him, but the boy had a clear view of Laura. She was leaning against the wall, facing Richard, the book clutched in both arms against her bosom, the wrapping paper on the floor at her feet.

"I thought of sending it back and pretending to think it had been left at my mother's house by mistake," said Richard sadly, "and of trying to make it seem that I hadn't read any of it. I thought of a dozen ways to pretend I believed you hadn't really meant me to read it----"

Making a crucial effort, she managed to speak.

"You--think I--did mean----"

"Well," he answered, with a helpless shrug, "you sent it! But it's what's in it that really matters, isn't it? I could have pretended anything in a note, I suppose, if I had written instead of coming. But I found that what I most dreaded was meeting you again, and as we've got to meet, of course, it seemed to me the only thing to do was to blunder through a talk with you, somehow or another, and get that part of it over. I thought the longer I put off facing you, the worse it would be for both of us--and--and the more embarrassing. I'm no good at pretending, anyhow; and the thing has happened. What use is there in not being honest? Well?"

She did not try again to speak. Her state was lamentable: it was all in her eyes.

Richard hung his head wretchedly, turning partly away from her. "There's only one way--to look at it," he said hesitatingly, and stammering. "That is--there's only one thing to do: to forget that it's happened. I'm--I--oh, well, I care for Cora altogether. She's got never to know about this. She hasn't any idea or--suspicion of it, has she?"

Laura managed to shake her head.

"She never must have," he said. "Will you promise me to burn that book now?"

She nodded slowly.

"I--I'm awfully sorry, Laura," he said brokenly. "I'm not idiot enough not to see that you're suffering horribly. I suppose I have done the most blundering thing possible." He stood a moment, irresolute, then turned to the door. "Good-bye."

Hedrick had just time to dive into the hideous little room of the multitudinous owls as Richard strode into the hall. Then, with the closing of the front door, the boy was back at his post.

Laura stood leaning against the wall, the book clutched in her arms, as Richard had left her. Slowly she began to sink, her eyes wide open, and, with her back against the wall, she slid down until she was sitting upon the floor. Her arms relaxed and hung limp at her sides, letting the book topple over in her lap, and she sat motionless.

One of her feet protruded from her skirt, and the leaping firelight illumined it ruddily. It was a graceful foot in an old shoe which had been re-soled and patched. It seemed very still, that patched shoe, as if it might stay still forever. Hedrick knew that Laura had not fainted, but he wished she would move her foot.

He went away. He went into the owl-room again, and stood there silently a long, long time. Then he stole back again toward the library door, but caught a glimpse of that old, motionless shoe through the doorway as he came near. Then he spied no more. He went out to the stable, and, secluding himself in his studio, sat moodily to meditate.

Something was the matter. Something had gone wrong. He had thrown a bomb which he had expected to go off with a stupendous bang, leaving him, as the smoke cleared, looking down in merry triumph, stinging his fallen enemies with his humour, withering them with satire, and inquiring of them how it felt, now they were getting it. But he was decidedly untriumphant: he wished Laura had moved her foot and that she hadn't that patch upon her shoe. He could not get his mind off that patch. He began to feel very queer: it seemed to be somehow because of the patch. If she had worn a pair of new shoes that morning. . . . Yes, it was that patch.

Thirteen is a dangerous age: nothing is more subtle. The boy, inspired to play the man, is beset by his own relapses into childhood, and Hedrick was near a relapse.

By and by, he went into the house again, to the library. Laura was not there, but he found the fire almost smothered under heaping ashes. She had burned her book.

He went into the room where the piano was, and played "The Girl on the Saskatchewan" with one finger; then went out to the porch and walked up and down, whistling cheerily.

After that, he went upstairs and asked Miss Peirce how his father was "feeling," receiving a noncommital reply; looked in at Cora's room; saw that his mother was lying asleep on Cora's bed and Cora herself examining the contents of a dressing-table drawer; and withdrew. A moment later, he stood in the passage outside Laura's closed door listening. There was no sound.

He retired to his own chamber, found it unbearable, and, fascinated by Laura's, returned thither; and, after standing a long time in the passage, knocked softly on the door.

"Laura," he called, in a rough and careless voice, "it's kind of a pretty day outdoors. If you've had your nap, if I was you I'd go out for a walk." There was no response. "I'll go with you," he added, "if you want me to."

He listened again and heard nothing. Then he turned the knob softly. The door was unlocked; he opened it and went in.

Laura was sitting in a chair, with her back to a window, her hands in her lap. She was staring straight in front of her.

He came near her hesitatingly, and at first she did not seem to see him or even to know that she was not alone in the room. Then she looked at him wonderingly, and, as he stood beside her, lifted her right hand and set it gently upon his head.

"Hedrick," she said, "was it you that took my book to----"

All at once he fell upon his knees, hid his face in her lap, and burst into loud and passionate sobbing.